Chicken Souvlaki Salad

I don’t post a lot of salads. I think it’s probably because I don’t make salads at home very often. I do eat salads out at restaurants fairly frequently though, and my three favorite ones to get are a nut-crusted goat cheese salad (much like the one I re-created here), a Pittsburgh Steak Salad with warm Riviera dressing (I am desperately trying to figure out how to make this dressing…when I do, you will know) and Chicken Souvlaki Salad. Buffalo has a lot of Greek restaurants, and even local restaurants that aren’t primarily Greek often have a Chicken Souvlaki Salad on the menu.


If you love Feta cheese even a fraction as much as I do, you’re going to love this salad. The tangy Greek vinaigrette I adapted from allrecipes is absolutely delicious. It’s probably the best Greek dressing I’ve ever had. This is definitely an entrée-sized salad, and I found it to be really filling for lunch or dinner. It’s even easy to make the dressing and chicken ahead of time and bring all the components to work for fresh, tasty lunch. I prefer the chicken to be warm when I serve it so I recommend microwaving it for leftovers, but I’m sure it tastes great cold as well. I personally don’t like peppers and onions very much but many restaurants also include those or olives on their souvlaki salads, so any of those would be great add-ins as well (not included in my nutrition calculations below). If you’ve never had a Chicken Souvlaki Salad before, I highly recommend you try this one – you won’t regret it!

Peach Basil Tart

Oh my. This is hands down my new favorite dessert. It’s like taking a bite of summer. The sweet peaches and basil taste so fresh atop the light and flaky puff pastry, and the lemon zest adds a brightness that finishes the combination off perfectly. I kind of want to have a cookout just so I can serve this for dessert. I can’t wait for you all to try it.

A few months back I picked up a copy of the Weight Watchers PointsPlus Cookbook and was immediately intrigued by a recipe it had for a French Apple Tart using a sheet of puff pastry dough. Since I didn’t want to wait until apple season to try it out (I still might make it for you all in the Fall) I thought a peach tart would be a perfect seasonal substitute. I started brainstorming flavors I thought would taste good with peaches and decided on fresh ginger (which I still think would also be delicious). On the way home from purchasing said ginger, I had an epiphany: basil. I turned my car right around and went back to the store, and I’m really glad I did. I wanted another really fresh tasting summer flavor to complement the peaches and basil and a little lemon zest worked perfectly.

This is a great dessert to serve guests because it looks beautiful, colorful and impressive, but it’s so simple you can easily throw it together for a weeknight treat for your family. At only 120 calories or 3 Weight Watchers Points+ per slice, this is a dessert you can feel good about.

 

Slow Cooker Buffalo Chicken

This recipe could not be easier. There are only 4 ingredients and you simply layer three of them in your slow cooker in the morning, go to work, come home, shred the meat, wait a little longer and then voila: your main course is ready! If the thought of turning on your oven in the summer has you placing a regular daily order at your local pizza joint, this may be the perfect solution. This recipe makes a lot of chicken, but it’s so versatile that you can use it to make tons of different meals. I photographed the chicken served on a roll as a sandwich but you could also use it to make quesadillas, top baked potatoes, add protein to mac & cheese, pile on a pizza, fill lettuce wraps (a low carb option!), etc. The possibilities are endless! *Update: I also mixed some of my leftovers with a little bit of light blue cheese dressing, microwaved it and ate it as a dip with baked tortilla chips and veggies. It was awesome!

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may be looking at these ingredients in shock. I’m a Buffalo girl, and as I’ve said before, we do not serve Buffalo chicken with ranch dressing here. It is simply not done. Blue cheese or go home. My loyalty to this unwritten rule prevented me from making this recipe for months, but I kept seeing it all over Pinterest and I admit I was intrigued. Finally a few weeks ago I had dinner at my mom’s house and wouldn’t you know, she made this recipe. It was delicious. I immediately felt torn between my taste buds (which were jumping for joy) and all that I know to be true (Buffalo Chicken + Ranch = NO). I’ve decided to rationalize my enjoyment of this recipe by pointing out that dry ranch seasoning is really not the same as ranch dressing. Plus, the overall flavor of the dish does not taste like ranch dressing. The packet is basically just mix of seasonings that adds to the yummy profile of flavors in the dish but does not taint the chicken like ranch dressing would. Right? I did drizzle some blue cheese dressing over the top on my sandwich for good measure and it was perfect. Hopefully I don’t get run out of town for this...

Crispy Corn Fritters

One of my favorite Summer flavors has always been corn on the cob. I remember when I was a kid my parents would make us go outside and husk the corn they’d bought before dinner. My brother, sister and I would sit on the picnic table in the backyard and meticulously try to pick every one of the little “hairs” out from between the kernels. We always boiled corn on the cob on my family, but I recently tried it grilled and I loved it that way too. I’m pretty sure I’d love it through any preparation. When I was young I loved smothering my corn with butter from one of those butter push-ups and sprinkling salt all over the top. Nowadays I am actually more of a corn on the cob purist. I usually just eat it plain. The sweet, juicy bursts of corn are generally all the flavor I need.

I actually found this recipe in the winter months and I have been impatiently waiting ever since for summer to hit so it would be seasonally relevant. Today, I finally got to make it! It was totally worth the wait. I love the texture: juicy bubbles of corn surrounded by a crispy coating too. The flavors are great too. Corn is truly the star here, with just a little onion, flour and egg to hold it all together and a little salt and pepper for flavor. You are welcome to add more herbs or seasoning if you’d like, but for a corn-lover like me, these fritters are a true celebration of the fresh corn. These make a great side dish to any meat you may want to throw on the grill and come together really quickly. This may be my new favorite Summer side dish!

Bacon Cheeseburger Wraps

I have been craving a cheeseburger like crazy lately. I have a lot of fun twists on cheeseburger flavors on my blog already: Cheeseburger Pizza, Cheeseburger “Cupcakes”, Cheeseburger Lettuce Wraps, etc. As usual though, I wanted to try something new. I recently remembered my love for Flatouts (I used to buy these all the time and I have no idea how I forgot about them or why I stopped), so a cheeseburger wrap seemed like the perfect dinner solution. I use the ingredients below together in a lot of recipes, so I started brainstorming (well, if you can consider immediately pouncing on the first idea that popped into my head brainstorming…) how to improve upon juicy seasoned ground beef smothered in cheese, ketchup and mustard, topped with crisp lettuce and ripe tomatoes. Then I realized…bacon. Is there anything that can’t be improved with bacon? I love the Hormel Real Bacon Bits because they’re an easy way to add just the right amount of bacon to your dish without any extra work or clean up. These wraps are satisfying, packed full of flavor and they come together quickly. Consider my burger craving squelched.